My son-in-law brought his computer down to have everything updated, they don't have broadband, Ubuntu updated in about two hours, Vista has so far taken two days because it has to be rebooted every other minute and I lose heart. The most annoying thing is that because it is usually a stand alone it refuses to keep the wired network connection working after every boot-up

towy71 wrote:My son-in-law brought his computer down to have everything updated, they don't have broadband, Ubuntu updated in about two hours, Vista has so far taken two days because it has to be rebooted every other minute and I lose heart. The most annoying thing is that because it is usually a stand alone it refuses to keep the wired network connection working after every boot-up

30-12-2009, 7:30(ish) pm, my daughter says "Can you see
why my laptop takes ages to boot up. Works fine but
takes about 5 minutes or more before I can use it properly."

(It had been like it before she went to UNI so at least or 6
months or more. It has an OEM Vista install - UGH!)

OK darling I will - BAD MOVE!!!

So started to clean up the system with my usual method
of doing a disk check and cold booting etc and noticed
updates were available so I did my usual thing of selecting
the important ones about 20 odd and ignored the SP1,
a 493MB SOAB that would have caused me grief - YEAH!

All went hunky dory, believe it or not, and by about 8:30pm
I had improved the boot time to around 3 minutes.

Then I said to the wife "Shall I finally install the SP1 update".

Of course being a woman and NOT being involved she gave
her blessing...... OH NO!

So proceeded and after about three hours SP1 was installed.

The laptop finally rebooted up and strange, NO sound.

The speaker icon in the tray was off and clicking it, it said
no sound device installed.

Looked at the device manager and the showed the sound
card and details as installed but also no sound device found.

WHAT?!? IT`S EITHER THERE, OR, IT ISN`T - WHICH IS IT???
Is this a case where both TRUE and FALSE exist in boolean
code??? ;o(

So connected to the net I proceeded to update the driver
and - BANG!

Black Screen Of Death - YEP, that`s right BLACK.

After about 5 seconds it reboots only to go into a Black
SOD again just before entering the Welcome screen in
cyclic fashion.

If you ain`t seen that SOAB then you have no idea of what
might have caused it, even the BLUE Screen Of Death gives
summat to "help" you.

Oh boy, panic set in, so after an intravenous drip feed of
concentrated tea I set about the problem.

Finally decided to start up in SAFE MODE and completely
uninstall the sound driver(s) and powered down as normal.

Restarted as normal and WIndies found the "new hardware"
auto-installed all the relevant stuff AND IT WORKED...

WHY? WHAT shite in SP1 made it fail in the first place?

Is this mighty Macroshite, (not of merchantable quality),
OS, REALLY that bad?

Last night my daughter`s boyfriend rang up with a problem.
(He`s at Bangor UNI, I`m in Loughborough.)

Vista/HP laptop again...

He installed Skype and BANG; Black Screen Of Death like
mine earlier in this thread. Rebooting failed to work!

I suggested disconnecting all external peripherals, powering
down completely as usual and disconnecting the battery for
at least 5 minutes; refitting the battery and powering up
again and to ring me up with the results. All went well and
he is up and running again... Why, oh why, oh why???

An hour later my daughter rang up, she`s at Chester UNI;
"dad my screen has locked up with pink and blue lines on
screen". Again, Vista/HP laptop combo... To cut a long story
short I told her to do the same as above and hers re-appeared
as normal again... Why, oh why, oh why???